


How They Made Me

by trace_of_scarlet



Category: Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Torchwood
Genre: Crossover, Gen, badassery, kickass women
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-12
Updated: 2013-02-12
Packaged: 2017-11-29 02:44:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/681820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trace_of_scarlet/pseuds/trace_of_scarlet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gwen, Natasha, weaponry, and all the rules they were born to break.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How They Made Me

**Author's Note:**

> Beta-ed by my Eric, with help from l’Ashie. 
> 
> Title comes from the Beyonce song ‘Who Run The World’.

“Is he an alien, then?” Gwen asks, and when Natasha doesn’t immediately answer her she repeats the question, a toss of her head indicating the destruction booming down the corridor. “Big-green-and-ugly, I mean. Is he an alien?”

“No,” Natasha says at last, and takes the opportunity to reload her sidearm - not that it will do her any good - as she hears Gwen mutter something that sounds like ‘makes a change’. “No, he’s not an alien. He’s... actually quite nice, normally.”

“Well, I’ve seen worse.” Gwen is methodically reloading her rocket launcher, even though she too knows by now that it won’t help her. “You should’ve seen my mam the time I crashed her car...”

The Hulk roars, terrifyingly close and reverberating inside her ribcage like a bomb-blast, and suddenly she is trapped in the dark belly of the helicarrier again as the shockwave roar drowns her mind out. When she manages to throw her thoughts back into herself (she is no longer a little girl, there is no more Red Room to take her self away) she realises Gwen has barely flinched, and she can’t believe her new companion can feign being so calm.

“Mam shouted louder than him, too,” Gwen observes matter-of-factly, and when she adds “Still does, I won’t lie” Natasha can’t help but giggle alongside her.

She’s read Gwen Cooper’s file, what there is of it; knows, or at least can make an educated guess, why an ordinary British bobby who by rights should be able to do no more with a gun than arrest its owner can assemble a rocket launcher like it’s Lego and talks about aliens as if they’re everyday. Sensible, sturdy Police Constable Gwen Cooper, who (probably) fights aliens and (definitely) has a husband, some small-town small-time boy who she’s been dating since university. The aliens and the weapons Natasha understands - although the rocket launcher is surely overkill; it’s certainly not discreet - but the husband? The baby daughter? They don’t fit with the data, they’re too collateral: you can fight or you can belong, those are the rules. You can be a soldier or a person, earth mother or warrior goddess, but not both, that is the beginning and the end of it, and when you choose your tribe there are no do-overs. In her time Natasha has broken every other rule she has ever known, but some things - albeit very few things - are the truth, and thus immutable.

“After this, I’m going down the pub,” sensible Gwen Cooper declares in the space between roars, counting the distance in the ticks of her watch. “You coming?”

When this is over, Natasha will need to: retrieve Bruce, distract the media, clean up the mess, write up her notes, have Coulson sign them off, report to Fury, most likely get a medical: those are the rules. Gwen knows this, and she knows it, and she knows Gwen knows it.

(Maybe it’s naivete: maybe she just doesn’t _know_ the rules she’s breaking. Or maybe she knows, and breaks them anyway.)

“Yes,” she says, and returns Gwen’s determined little smile with one of her own. “Yes, I’ll come.”

After all, what’s one more broken rule?


End file.
